Timo van Grinsven & Juan Pablo Plazas : You, Me and You Again by Me

Who said that dancing only concerns movement?
What’s the point where moving becomes dancing?

How about still dancing when dancing still?
Haven’t you heard of it?

Let’s look at the basics of dancing:

To dance solo is very elementary: the principle is moving along with the air, but don’t be afraid, air is not your enemy.

To dance with another person requires interacting with his/her weight, volume, flexibility, tempo. It also demands guessing what the other person is thinking: When you move your left foot, I move my right hand. Every step is an invitation to react and purpose. This requires intense concentration within timing reactions, respect and dare. It’s not easy but it’s been highly recommended.

But, wait!

Don’t get us wrong, we are not dancers, we do sculptures and installations.

We mix ingredients, move them around and make sure they are not fixed.

Our sculptures don’t move, their aim is to stand still, although in the process they have moved many times in space or in themselves. Often we present them standing still, just because we want you to move around them.

What is then the relationship between sculpture and dance?
Isn’t it itself a paradox?

A sculpture has no place to go, just like a dance. To move is “the process of going from one place to another”[1] with a specific purpose. But with dancing there is no purpose involved in the act of displacing. We often dance when we don’t want to be anywhere else. We walk tiny circles without a fixed destination, inside a space in which we are the borders. Here, curtain rules are accepted because everybody knows them:

“Remember that curtains are for framing, not for privacy”2
We show our body as it moves without knowing how it looks.
We feel the movement, and it feels good.

please mind your body and the place that it takes
please mind the sculpture and the place that it makes

Juan Pablo Plazas & Timo van Grinsven

[1]http://www.etymonline.com/index.phpallowed_in_frame=0&search=move[2] How to hang curtains. http://www.hgexpo.com/blog/how-to-hangcurtains.html

The assemblages of Timo van Grinsven consist of a variety of materials, combined to make tactile installations, according to a strong idiosyncratic logic. The most important part of this logic is a search for the point where the probable becomes the improbable. The works created are (1:1) working models for themselves. While working, his thoughts move between image and text. Hence, language plays a big role in the artist’s works, as a means to reflect on the subconscious creative process where not all questions have to be answered.

Because of its transient character, the artist’s logic is not bound by the limits of any medium. Installations, sculptures, paintings and drawings – everything is connected. In his studio, the artist works on several different pieces at the same time, during which components may move from one piece to another, to find their place within a process of controlled coincidence. The result is a collection of works bearing the traces of an underlying dialogue, a storyline that remains veiled.

Timo van Grinsven

Timo van Grinsven (°1985, Netherlands) lives and works in Antwerp. His work is supported by the Stipendium Program for Emerging Artists from the Mondriaan Fund and by the Flemish Department of Culture. It has been exhibited, among others, at Basis (Frankfurt), Marres (Maastricht), POPPOSITIONS (Brussels), Sint Lucas (Antwerp), TETEM kunstruimte (Enschede), AIR Antwerp, CC Maasmechelen and Extra City (Antwerp).

The artistic practice of the Colombian artist and anthropologist Juan Pablo Plazas arises from a deep interest in the relationship between humans and objects. Plazas’ work consists of designing actions and performances, which challenge the material parameters of objects, and their linguistic relationships. Objects translate into sculptures with erratic characteristics. They question their objecthood and our human bodies. They provoke the normality of the everyday. They prompt the viewer to adjust his habits and see things anew.

Juan Pablo Plazas (°1987, Colombia) lives and works in Brussels. In 2013 Plazas graduated from the Master’s program at LUCA School of Arts in Brussels. In 2014 he won the Jan Naaijkens award for most talented young artist by the North Brabant Society.